David McCoy

Business Process Networks – I had a cool research discussion with my fellow analyst Benoit L’heureux. A great blend of IaaS and community for B2B process.You can read on this if you look him up. Expect to see more of the BPN research in your future.

Certification for Business Process Competency Centers – Hallway discussion with Les from ebizQ and Samir from Appian.  Interesting twist to shift the certification discussion from the individual to the collective. Now, what if you create a CMM-like approach for BPM maturity? That gets really interesting.

IBM’s Ilog integration – This is nerdy, yes… But, I saw a pretty nice integration of IBM’s Ilog acquisition at the show. I saw JRULES linked into WID via a wizard that would work with the JAR file, and an alternative direct WSDL grabbing approach. Not all of it was available today, but the integration was smooth and graphical. Nothing here is really new in theory, just in look, feel, and ease of use.

The Big Fish Metaphor – This year, it’s hard to get masses of people to attend a user conference. Several vendors confirmed that they were rethinking or delaying their conferences until 2010.  Q4 is a booger. But get this. It’s like a river current. When the current is weak (good years) there is no resistance and all the fish can navigate the waters – everyone shows up at your user conference. When the current is STRONG (huge Q4 travel restrictions, etc) only the strongest and biggest fish can swim upstream. You get fewer fish, but they are the top quality ones who made the extra effort to be there. Think about that when you are planning your user conferences. Quality vs quantity kind of thing.

Monsters, Inc. – I was leading a session on business rule management, and I described the care and mining of a rules subject matter expert. (SME)  To make it a bit more memorable, I reminded folks of Roz, from Monsters, Inc. If you have not seen the movie, you have missed some great animation. If you have seen Roz say, “You didn’t fill out your paperwork!” you have seen a classic business rules SME at work:

Mike: Roz, my tender, oozing blossom, you’re looking fabulous today. Is that a new haircut? Tell me it’s a new haircut. It’s got to be a new haircut. New makeup? You had a lift? You had a tuck? You had something? Something has been inserted in in you that makes you look… Listen, I need a favor. Randall was working late last night out on the scare floor. I really need the key to the door he was using.
Roz: Well, isn’t that nice? But guess what? You didn’t turn in your paperwork last night.
Mike: He didn’t… I… no paperwork?
Roz: This office is now closed.

There are people who know all about rules, and forms, and requirements, etc. They are SMEs and you need to treat them nicely. Not to spoil the movie, but you know Roz turned out to be a bit more important to the plot than you would have thought… so will your SMEs.

—————-

Disclaimer: These are observations that I could have made on Twitter were I ignorant of the number 140, and were I Twittering.  I am not and I do not. I blog.  This is not research…. consider it fodder for discussion. Elise Olding will be producing a trip report from the conference for our clients. That will be research. Maybe some of this will make it in there, after it is scrubbed, baked and cooled on an open window.

One more ’self-serving’ comment. Lots of interest in my side hobby (the ‘humor column’).  Either I am showing too much excitement or people are hungry for laughs in 2009. I think it might be both.  2009 will soon be over… sooner than later if Oz has its way with interest rates. Until then, keep swmming.